


Stone Bells

by landofspices



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Battle of Five Armies Fix-It, Eventual Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Paraplegia, Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Thorin-centric, Virgin Thorin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 21:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6211825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landofspices/pseuds/landofspices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Dwarf is dying, is close to death, bones shattered and too much blood spilt, but he lives yet." </p><p>In which Thorin survives, but with injuries which make ruling Erebor ... challenging.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone Bells

I was my lord's bard,  
telling again sweetly  
what had been done bloodily.

—R. S. Thomas, "Perspectives"

 

With a gentleness no one could have foreseen, or believed possible, the Skin-changer takes Thorin into his great, dark arms. The clash of steel is still loud on the slopes below Ravenhill, but he seems in no hurry: slowly, slowly, he eases the King from the red-splashed cold in which Thorin has been lying, ungainly and unkingly, almost unrecognisable. His long claws do no hurt. Thorin is still and small, his head limp against the bear's arm, and Dwalin—who does not know how long he has been standing there, only that he came too late and found Bilbo weeping, and the snow-bright world tilted when he saw who lay beside him—is shamed; he can no longer restrain his tears, and he swears bitterly in Khuzdul, his voice breaking, as the grief snarls at him like a starved beast. He thinks, with some little part of his heart which has not been shivered into pieces, that Bilbo will come to him: seeking solace; or to try, hopelessly, to offer it. A soft one, that, to be with Thorin at the end... 

But the thought of that end does not bear thinking. He cares not for fairness, not any more; without Thorin—he will not let himself think where Thorin is, _why_ he is gone—there is no place in Erebor for him. And Fili lost too, just a lad—no, he dare not begin to think it. In his own heart, he is a coward, for all that no Dwarf would call him so and think to live. 

_I should have been at his side_ , Dwalin thinks, as he walks apart, as he hears the screams of Orcs and the piercing, gleeful cries of the Eagles who have come too late: as he has come too late. It is the office of a shield-brother to be so. _Who else but I should have given their ear to his last words, and his last breath? For I have tended him in wounds and sickness, been beside him in grief, known his joys—the more precious, that they came rarely—seen his fear, which he learnt to hide too well. I have fought at his back some thousand times; I have put my arm about him as he wept._ He knows he wrongs the Hobbit. Bilbo has shown valour far above anything hoped or expected of their Burglar; he deserves honour. But this was not honour: it was chance, or an ill fate. _And though I might spend the rest of my days upending hourglasses_ , he thinks, _never will I coax that self-same sand to pass through once again. It is scattered._

He dashes his hand across his burning eyes. His trousers are soaked and cold at the knees from sinking into the snow beside Thorin, when he caught up a white, still hand and could find no warmth in it, no movement of the blood. Now there is only the huge bloodstain, marking the place where he fell, and Bilbo crouched beside it like an animal. When Thorin lay there, when he knelt at his side, he saw that tears had washed away some of the blood on Thorin's face, but even now he can find no voice to ask Bilbo if they were tears of pain, or fear, or something else entirely. 

His own heartbeat thrums in his ears, loud as Thorin's was not. _I was not there. I was not there. I was not there._

*

Bilbo is going to get up as soon as his legs will carry him. As soon as he is quite sure of not fainting, he will rise and—he is not sure what he will do, but there must be something. The warm wave of tears which broke in him when Thorin stopped talking and grew still has taken his last strength, or what he believes is his last. If he has learnt anything on the Adventure—calling it that even to himself is very bitter, now, but he can't break the habit of months—it is that you can go on running, or fighting, or loving, or hoping, even when you are quite sure you should have given up, that any _reasonable person _would have given up, long ago. Sometimes that means that you keep running away from Orcs when it feels like your lungs are a pair of worn-out bellows. Other times it means that you keep on listening for a few more words, another pain-cracked sentence, although you know quite well you are not going to hear that voice again.__

__In the cold air, Dwalin's furious tears seem loud. Bilbo cannot get his mind to leave hold of the flickering things it wants to show him: pictures of Thorin fallen into quietness. In the dark cell, deep in Thranduil's Halls; poisoned by spiders, kept alone, and by the time Bilbo found him, badly frightened about the rest of his Company, especially Fili and Kili. How they had whispered to each other through the bars, and Thorin's voice dying away, a too-thin hand had clutched at his—something they could never speak of, but a comfort sorely needed. How in that desperate, horrible quarrel over the Arkenstone, Thorin had gone quiet for just a moment, unable to shout or threaten, his voice stopped for fear of a shameful sob before all the assembled Men and Elves. By then, Bilbo knew him well enough to see why he had fallen silent, and all the Dwarves of the Company saw that his eyes were full of tears. How he did not have the strength to speak any way but softly, at the last, and then for a moment of uncertain length, they spoke with their eyes alone. Thorin's blue gaze was both bright and dull, tear-wet, lapped about by silence; as the patient, unyielding stone of tombs laps the beloved dead. There had been no time at all, for the tomb seemed already to be building itself up about them, even as Thorin's breath weakened and his tears stopped and his skin lost its last warmth._ _

__*_ _

__The murmur is passing amongst Dain's people, and the Company, scattered as they are, hear it too. _The King is dead. Thorin has fallen. Fili has fallen. Kili is missing. The King is dead._ Bofur and Bifur are deep in the fray as the Orcs make their last stand, though many are fleeing. They are wringing wet with Orc-blood, but they do not even notice it. Bifur shouts to his brother in Khuzdul and Bofur shouts back, but they don't miss a step. _ _

__*_ _

__Oin is running. He passes by many wounded without tendering aid, without even offering water, and for few others would he turn his back on his calling—his brother, if Gloin were hurt; Gloin's son, Gimli, may such a day never come to pass; and the young princes, he's known them all their short lives. The thought of Fili lying dead wets his eyes as he runs, and his breath comes sore. They say the Skin-changer has gone to bring Thorin down. If there is any hope—if there is _any_ hope. Even if there is none, Oin must be the one to tend him first, to give the special cares which none but healers know. No strange hand shall touch Thorin, so private and so proud: Thorin, who took no wife; who never fell into mannish ways; who never looked for comfort, but bore grief in his bones and on his face—Thorin who cut away his own beard, again and again, who never ceased to mourn. _ _

__Already, he sees, the first tents for the wounded have been rigged by some of the womenfolk and the Elves. He recognises Bard's near-grown daughter standing at the opening of one, and there are Men carrying other, wounded Men inside as she points and instructs. The tide of the battle has turned and the Orcs are routed now, and fleeing, with many of Dain's and Thranduil's people pursuing them—the Dwarves and Elves given new strength by the havoc the Eagles have wrought among the Orcish armies. The Laketowners have borne the worst losses, and the healing tents are thronged with bleeding Men. Some are close to death and Oin's heart aches for pity even as he pushes through the crowds of Men aiding one another, carrying the weakest and the worst hurt, seeking a great bear with a royal burden._ _

__He reaches the last tent just as Beorn is stooping to settle Thorin onto the cot. The King's body is sodden with blood; only his hand hangs loose for a moment, trailing to the floor, before Beorn lifts it carefully and settles it next to him. The hand is pallid as marble, Thorin's fingers open, senseless, still. So, he is dead. And Oin steps forward cautiously, with an uncanny sense that this is a private place, and something he must not disturb._ _

__*_ _

__Beorn is always himself, whether he is man or bear. They are not separable things, but part of what it is to live as Beorn, to wake and sleep and run in the silver-green dawn as Beorn. His senses tell him no lies. There is still, in this little creature, a thread of life—buried too deep for his companions to find it, but Beorn's nose is certain; he can tell the difference between a live creature and a dead one. The Dwarf is dying, is close to death, bones shattered and too much blood spilt, but he lives yet._ _

__The old Dwarf standing behind him, one of the Company who lodged at his house, smells of sweat and terror and salt tears. There is no time for words, no time to change his skin now and speak in the language of man. He drops down to run on all four legs, to follow the scents which he understands but cannot explain, and the Dwarf draws aside. The Elven-king. He must seek out the Elven-king. Beorn, long-lived Beorn, knows there are few in Arda who could tend such a grievous wound; only the wisdom of the Elves offers any hope. He will not need to change, to speak with Thranduil Oropherion, who knows many tongues, but whether Thranduil will aid the King Under the Mountain is something he cannot begin to guess at. His paws beat the damp earth like hammers. The Elven-king's scent is particular, easy to follow, sweet amongst the reeks of battle and the wounded. He would know it anywhere, that lovely sharpness: as if starlight left an odour on the air. Thranduil is not too far away, in one of the healing tents closest to the battlefields, bent over a wounded Elf, singing softly, but he breaks off when Beorn enters._ _

__"Thranduil," Beorn says in his own language. "Thorin has slain Azog and taken grave wounds. Will you come to him? He will soon enter the Halls, if you do not."_ _

__Silence spreads between them, for what seems like a long time. A daughter of Men, not quite grown, comes in with a little lamp; the shadows are falling outside. Thranduil's eyes look dark, uncertain, old. He lays his hands on the injured Elf's brow and sings another phrase, falls silent, then speaks in Beorn's tongue. "I will come," he says. He turns his back on Beorn, gathering glass vials and strips of linen, but before he leaves the tent he meets the bear's eyes once more. "He will thank none of us for this," he says, in his soft voice, which sounds musical even in the tongue of the bears. Then he lifts his proud head and walks out of the tent, as if he already knows where Thorin is lying; as if he has only waited for somebody to ask for his help._ _

__*_ _

__Beorn does not follow. The quick-falling dusk closes round him, until he knows that fur and shadow would be indistinguishable to mortal Men and to the Dwarves; only the Elves could make him out now. Blood-scent floats thickly on the air. He is still man enough to be sickened by it. He pads across the fields of battle, where by now it is too dark for Men to see clearly, but there is still light enough for him and for the Elves. Elves lie crushed with their long hair pooled around them in the mud, bright or black, their armour cracked by Orc blades. The fallen Dwarves, for all their avarice, their deceit, their oath-breaking, are smaller than the children of his race: of whom there are none, any more. But Beorn remembers them._ _

__He goes away into the twilight as the moon brightens and the stars show their small, cruel faces. Tonight belongs to the dead, and the dying. He will have no part in this world; it is not his._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Oin's "special cares" : this is a reference to what for most of the twentieth century were called the "last offices", part of nursing care given to the dead.


End file.
